It's a fantastic example of 'good enough', because the alternative was doing this all by hand or using mechanical tools which - while sometimes quite fast - were error prone especially for long and repetitive calculations.

An Olivetti electronic/mechanical calculator for instance took up half your desk, was horribly slow and consumed a ton of power. No way that you would ever take it with you and working with the beast would require a serious investment in time, they weren't cheap either.

These little calculators were complete game changers. The model in the article was one of my prized possessions, there simply was no alternative that I could have afforded.